Box Copy
Battle Monsters - There's a Rumble in
Hell, and you're invited.
Discussion
If I were to tell you Super Smash Bros.
existed on the Saturn, would you believe me? Probably not, but if
you stripped away the Mario characters and players 3 and 4 you’d
essentially have that same game play experience in Battle Monsters.
The easiest way to describe this game is to take the characters from
DarkStalkers, the digitization of Mortal Kombat, and the mechanics
of Smash Bros. and mash them all together to form a mostly fun romp.
The actors and actresses playing the characters are mixed in with
some stop-motion characters to form 12 of the oddest yet obvious
monster references in current culture. You have Frankenstein,
Medusa, evil twins, and more at your command. The outfits range from
fairly intricate to off-the-rack kit-bashing. The character graphics
are overall good, but not as clean as say Mortal Kombat II. What IS
interesting is that this may have been by design – the game has
almost zero load times, or at least hides them extremely well.
Move lists are read like Mortal Kombat with the double tap + a
button, but you can sneak in some Street Fighter-like rolls to help
with some of them. The overall controls aren’t that bad, but they
can be a tad jerky during the game’s zooming in-and-out feature.
Oddly enough, when you’re zoomed in is when they look the cleanest;
from far away a lot of the game details get jumbled or pixilated.
More a testament to the game’s age and system it’s on than anything
the programmers had fault with. The various stages are actually
varied quite nicely – one stage has a breakable bridge, and others
have random platforms. You’ll fight everywhere from the clouds to
graveyards to swampy pits.
As I mentioned before, the game’s age shows, and it shows fairly
well considering the Saturn, but I will tell you this; for the few
bucks this will cost you to acquire it is totally worth the
investment. Fun characters, easy controls, easy combos, and monster
fun is to be had.
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Trivia
- With the exception of the Option
screen, the game rarely shows a loading screen, or at least
hides it real well.
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